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Wikipedia says:

A postscript may be a sentence, a paragraph, or occasionally many paragraphs added to, often hastily and incidentally, after the signature of a letter or (sometimes) the main body of an essay or book.

When all letters were handwritten, and adding a new thought to the letter would have likely involved rewriting the entire letter, a postscript had obvious practicality. Now, however, one can just as easily add the thought to the main text.

RegDwigнt
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Fred
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    Wikipedia does not seem to expressly exclude electronic mail or suggest that PS applies exclusively to letters written on paper. An e-mail is still a "letter" for all purposes. – Kris Jan 22 '13 at 12:32
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    I do not 'compose' but 'write' my emails, following the flow of thought. A post script serves exactly the same purpose in snail mail and e-mail for me. It's another matter that I do go back and edit the message, but only for errors, not for changes in content. – Kris Jan 22 '13 at 12:35
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    I think a lot depends on the length and complexity of the email. A PS added to a 6 line email would be daft, incorporate it as you say. However, if you've just drafted a page long email with a dozen or so paragraphs, checked it and proof read it and suddenly have an after thought you want to add, I see nothing at all wrong with adding a PS. – spiceyokooko Jan 22 '13 at 14:00
  • @spiceyokooko While I appreciate the distinction in the length of the email, I think that formality should also be considered. To me it seems acceptable to add a postscript to an informal email, but sloppy to do so when corresponding formally. I think an email with "a dozen or so paragraphs" is more likely to be a formal in nature. – Fred Jan 22 '13 at 17:26
  • On second thought, perhaps the postscript serves as a distinction between the formal and the informal as in the example given by J.R. – Fred Jan 22 '13 at 17:38
  • I don't see a PS as having any distinction between formal or informal as it works in precisely the same way in both instances. Your initial query, questioned the legitimacy of continuing to use a device for adding an additional thought to an easy to edit email. I mentioned that if you'd spent a fair amount of time drafting/editing/proofreading an email and then have an afterthought, are you now going to redraft that or simply add a postscript? Logic and reason should dictate the answer, specially since time is money in business. – spiceyokooko Jan 22 '13 at 18:27
  • I second what @spiceyokooko says here. I've suggested one particular case where a P.S. might be used effectively; by no means should that be construed as the definitive answer to such an open-ended question. I think the "time is money" adage indeed applicable. In other words: When should I use a P.S.? (a) When it would be a waste of time to do otherwise, or (b) when the material in the P.S. is unrelated to the rest of the message. – J.R. Jan 23 '13 at 08:39

4 Answers4

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I use a P.S. rather often in my emails, when the content of the P.S. is unrelated to the rest of the body of the message. For example, if I was writing two or three paragraphs about a database problem to a colleague, but I knew his wife had been recently released from the hospital, I might end the message with something like:

P.S. I hope your wife is doing better.

That's an easy way to make an abrupt transition to something unrelated to the rest of the message.

Such modern usage isn't driven by an inability to conveniently insert the text (which is easily done electronically) – it's more a matter of how much that closing thought is related to the rest of the message.

P.S. You know you can't believe everything you read on Wikipedia, right?

J.R.
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    Do you put your PS before or after your signature (greetings, name, function, company...)? – Konerak Jan 22 '13 at 15:12
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    @Konerak: I'd put it after the greetings & name but before the "company signature block": Best regards, XY <br><br> PS: ... <br><br> --- <br> Dr. X. Y <br> Company Name <br> Phone: .... – Heinzi Jan 22 '13 at 15:21
  • @J.R. Yes, I wasn't really concerned with the academic rigor of the entry, but rather, with including a generally accepted definition of the word with my question as a point of departure. – Fred Jan 22 '13 at 17:13
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    @Fred: Your answer about Wikipedia now has me wondering if you caught how my last question was primarily meant to illustrate the way a P.S. could be used to switch subjects. – J.R. Jan 22 '13 at 17:41
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    @Konerak: I usually put my P.S. just before the signature block, because so many people are used to not reading past the signature block, and I'm afraid it would be missed entirely. – J.R. Jun 21 '13 at 22:01
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You seem to have answered your own question, but it's perhaps worth pointing out that in both email and conventional mail a postscript can be a consciously chosen device for drawing attention to what it contains. What might look like an afterthought to the reader might be a deliberate ploy by the writer.

Barrie England
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  • This is a good point, and shows that my own thoughts were, at best, an incomplete answer to my question. – Fred Jan 22 '13 at 17:15
  • Yes, PS is sometimes used for that purpose. What is interesting about this use is that PS also implies that what follows it is an afterthought; it thus makes something important by pretending that it is not important. – jsw29 Apr 13 '23 at 16:14
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I'm going to contradict the other answers by saying it would just look plain wrong to me.

Now, that's not to say it is necessarily a bad idea - we have two other answers that find it perfectly acceptable.

Logically, it's reasonable as the form came to mean "oh, and also" some time ago, so it would no more have to be after a letter was finished than a teamster would have to have a team of horses.

But it is still going to look wrong to me, and the chances are that I am not unique and there are other people out there who would think it looks wrong.

Of course, if you tried to satisfy everyone in this way, then you'd write nothing. There are times when being seen to follow "the rules" is more important than others, so perhaps it would be worth avoiding sometimes more than others.

Jon Hanna
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    Can you elaborate? What about it "looks wrong"? – Nate Eldredge Jan 22 '13 at 17:09
  • It' stands for "post script", but it isn't post script. It could just be a matter of the degree to which I think of the expanded version when I see it. Much like how people differ in their reactions to pleonasms around abbreviations like "ATM Machine". The more the expanded version comes to mind when you see it, the more likely you are going to find it seems wrong to you. – Jon Hanna Jan 22 '13 at 23:24
  • @JonHanna: I appreciate your point, but "P.S." doesn't sound off to me – despite its original meaning – maybe because of how much the language of email borrows from snail mail lingo? We talk about "mailboxes" and "addresses", and even use envelopes as icons. Heck, if "P.S." feels wrong, I would think "CC:" would feel even wronger, having once stood for 'carbon copy'. Still, I can understand how my no-call on this matter might not be universally shared. – J.R. Jan 23 '13 at 08:48
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    @J.R. CC seems okay to me because it's so clearly wrong, that it's clearly a metaphor. It's also one well established from before email existed (though its dying out in those other uses). PS hits the middle for me; not close enough to the original to make sense as an extension, nor so far from it as to be a metaphorical or poetic use. As said though, it's subjective and others will react differently. – Jon Hanna Jan 23 '13 at 09:41
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I have used P.S., on and off, most of my life. I have never done so because I forgot something and had to add it after the fact. When I've used it, I've done so deliberately—specifically wanting the text to go at the end (and after my signature) rather than anywhere else.

So, for me, it's always been a matter of stylistic choice.

Karen Hertzberg expresses the same idea in the blog post "What PS Means and How to Use It Correctly in Your Email". (Note that the UK form, and that used by The Chicago Manual of Style, does not use periods between the capital letters.)

PS once saved us from having to edit or rewrite an entire letter just to include an important afterthought. But email allows us to go back and edit before sending. Technically, we could avoid the use of PS altogether in electronic communication. But should we?

Not really. PS is still useful for effect, and it’s a great way to get a specific point noticed. Although the Internet has made us a culture of skimmers rather than people who read things like email word-for-word, we tend to notice what’s at the beginning and end of a text. Can you think of a time when you didn’t read the PS in an email you cared enough about to open?

Including a PS has long been a direct mail marketing strategy. Statistics once showed that as many as 79 percent of people who opened a direct mail letter would read the PS first. Although times have changed, email marketers still swear by it as a way to reiterate a call to action, create FOMO, provide some sort of bonus information or offer, or even share a testimonial.

I thought about this, and those statistics reflect my own reading habits. If I see a message that has a P.S. at the end, I tend to read that first—and then read the message itself afterward.

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Jason Bassford
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